Extract from Lenin's "Notes of a Publicist" (1922)

This is an extract from Lenin's "Notes of a Publicist" in which he defends Rosa Luxemburg against the reformists.

[...]

Paul Levi now wants to get into the good graces of the
bourgeoisie—and, consequently, of its agents, the
Second and the Two-and-a-Half Internationals—by
republishing precisely those writings of Rosa Luxemburg in which
she was wrong. We shall reply to this by quoting two lines from
a good old Russian fable1: “Eagles may
at times fly lower than hens, but hens can never rise to the
height of eagles.” Rosa Luxemburg was mistaken on the
question of the independence of Poland; she was mistaken in 1903
in her appraisal of Menshevism; she was mistaken on the theory
of the accumulation of capital; she was mistaken in July 1914,
when, together with Plekhanov, Vandervelde, Kautsky and others,
she advocated unity between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks; she
was mistaken in what she wrote in prison in 1918 (she corrected
most of these mistakes at the end of 1918 and the beginning of
1919 after she was released). But in spite of her mistakes she
was—and remains for us—an eagle. And not only will
Communists all over the world cherish her memory, but her
biography and her complete works (the publication of
which the German Communists are inordinately delaying, which can
only be partly excused by the tremendous losses they are
suffering in their severe struggle) will serve as useful manuals
for training many generations of Communists all over the
world. “Since August 4, 1914 2, German
Social-Democracy has been a stinking corpse"—this
statement will make Rosa Luxemburg’s name famous in the
history of the international working class movement. And, of
course, in the backyard of the working-class movement, among the
dung heaps, hens like Paul Levi, Scheidemann, Kautsky and all
that fraternity will cackle over the mistakes committed by the
great Communist. To every man his own.

1 This is a reference
to the fable The Eagle and the Hens by Ivan Krylov.

2 In the Reichstag on August 4, 1914, the Social-Democratic
faction voted with the bourgeois representatives in favour of
granting the imperial government war credits amounting to 5,000
million marks, thereby approving Wilhelm II’s imperialist
policy.